"Momma's Worry" by TS Hawkins

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TS Ink Toll

Monday, August 27, 2018

In a world that treats Black life as if it’s disposable, The Bag Lady is an urgent reckoning and revelation. She is the accumulation of discarded lives and abandoned histories reeking havoc on the amnesia, the forgetting, the erasure and the silencing. Remembering is the responsibility of the living. Are you doing your work? Because an unacknowledged history produces ghosts.

Performed by Taja Lindley, The Bag Lady Manifesta features an immersive installation of memory followed by a participatory performance ritual where audiences are invited to (re)consider what to let go of, and what to remember – individually and collectively. Through dynamic movement, burlesque, text, soundscapes, ritual and projection Lindley adorns and activates her Black, queer, female body with trash bags to traverse the dumping grounds and shadow side(s) of herself, the audience and the United States.

This work is inspired by previous iterations of Lindley’s Bag Lady work, including This Ain’t A Eulogy: A Ritual for Re-Membering, and was presented as the culmination of Lindley’s residency at Dixon Place.

The performance will be followed by a talkback with Taja, moderated by international author and performance poet TS Hawkins!